David Letterman, a public man

DAVID LETTERMAN

Last night I watched a very public man do what men should do when they go along the wrong way, he did what so few public people ever do; he had made errors, he admitted them without excuse, he stopped someone else from taking advantage of his mistakes, and is now focusing on what he can to protect all that he loves in life.

The list of public people who give in to the knee-jerk reaction of denying and lying is a long one, one that has grown continually for decades; the actions of people who ignore the truth that they are responsible. We are all responsible, we all occasionally go down a regrettable path; and then we are similarly responsible for doing what we can to make amends. Letterman has done all that, he has not asked for pity or special favor; he is paying a price now and will to pay more in the future, perhaps a long future.

That some people will feel the need to throw ashes on his head makes me ask how they have responded when they did something wrong; remember that no one has never made a misstep or two, that is how we learn, that is what we are about, it is how a man responds that shows how real qualities of character.

How do you and I respond when we do something wrong? The answer is what is relevant and important here.

A NEW ATTITUDE

A NEW ATTITUDE

I had thought for quite a while now that there is nothing new in the area of feelings and attitudes, now I am not so sure that what I knew to be true is so. Here is what has happened so far:

Until about two weeks ago it looked as if I could expect to live another three or four years; this is from the statistics for people who have what I have, and is a number not too far from the average expectancy for all men in this country. I am well aware that these statistics imply and I intend to do anything that I can to come out on the far side of that bell-curve; I also found the study that found people with heart failure often over estimate how long they have to go. I had asked a few medical people, found more than a few articles online that all said about the same thing. My chore had been to get my head around that notion, to accept what was and then to get on with my life.

As I wrote a week or so ago I had an appointment with someone who discovered that I have severe apnea, but that with treatment I can expect to add perhaps four years to this cruise that I am on. And one other thing, he now has probable cause for something that I had been told many times was idiopathic. Treatable and redeeming–quantity and quality.

In effect I have just have just been offered a doubling of my expectancy; this idea is taking a while to root in my cranium and germinate, but it will. There are events and situations all through life that cause feelings and attitudes; except that this business is different, what I am feeling and how I am seeing the world is not quite like any I have ever experienced. I am not ready to say that this is unique, it might just be a variation on one or more, I just can’t say yet.

Obviously I am happy with the news, I have long ago discarded any wish to be dead notions; have reached the conclusion that whatever pains and discomfort come along, no matter how intense, they cannot overwhelm that of being, of becoming. This new thing is a testimony to perseverance, to scratching at the tunnel face until the gold vein is completely discovered; and for that I am relieved, perhaps more than a bit smug. This that I have just received is a gift, more to God than from; but it is such an overwhelming gift that no words are appropriate. Perhaps it would be as if someone gave me a new car–then I see that it is a brand-new Rolls convertible; what the hell do you do with such a thing! A great problem to work at as I go on.

I may write more about this as I figure it out and believe it would be of interest to someone, anyone else. Let me add one more thing: To say that this is more a gift to God than from God is because I know that without man God is irrelevant; He is what we are about, that makes us what we are.

POSSIBILITIES

POSSIBILITIES

It is possible to cherish something so much that I destroy it.

It is possible to desire someone so much that I frighten.

It is possible to proclaim so loudly that they cover their ears.

It is possible to do and be all of those efforts; but it is necessary that I try again today and then tomorrow.

The possibility is the prize.

A mile further down an empty street

In the morning I write my blog until the well of ideas is empty, then I feel right about going on with my day; that didn’t happen this morning, I am neither finished nor satisfied with what I wrote earlier:

-The comments about Mary Tyler Moore leave me uncomfortable, not that I will retract any of them, but that they might cause pain, that there might be someone behind that thick facade, someone who might still feel. The other thing is that I went and stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, spent a couple of minutes staring at this face; I have gone from being a handsome young guy, to an ugly old one, something along the lines of a Jack Nicholson. It has taken me a while to stare and to accept what I am now, not what I was then; it has taken me a while to accept what I am now, and to feel good about it; it is only when I have done this that I will move on, not be commenting about how others look.

-Another reason that I am unfinished this morning is that I am not comfortable going, as a volunteer, to the bereavement meeting for widows and children; I have been attending since October, a monthly event, looking for something to do, to be of some kind of assistance, looking to fit in somewhere, I ain’t found that place, don’t know if there is one for me. It is easy with hospice, the face to face thing happens, friendly or rejected it happens, this new thing has nothing so far. I have to resolve this question, and the one of why I feel the need to go in the first place.

-I don’t want to stop writing and then have to go out and walk in the cold, it is still very cold out there, I’d rather be warm, maybe have a morning nap.

-This idea of turning away from using accessories is a difficult one, it may be one of the most difficult things that anyone can do; I may never be finished with this idea, this chore of self transcendence. The word accessories is the right one, it is the umbrella category for so much that I thought necessary.

Now that I have put these admissions out for consumption I am ready for a morning nap, then a walk in the warmer midday sun

Afraid to believe

A man I know assured me yesterday that Hilary’s tears before the New Hampshire primary were staged, false, done to manipulate; this fellow runs a health care company and so may no more about what was inside her mind than I do, or that is the way he would have it. There was no way that he was going to be taken in by her trick, and he wanted everyone else to know it, so there.

Of course he missed the point: People responded to her show of emotion, voted their desire to believe in a woman who believes in what she is about; this caused a reaction in my friend, why?

What is there about believing in something that frightens?

What is there about believing that attracts even as it frightens ?

Is my friend afraid of being disappointed, being hurt?

Is he embarrassed to be seen as believing?

Is that why he has decided to be a cynic?

It is no secret that the penalty for being a cynic is that one has to live without belief, there is no greater punishment than that. To be driven to that state of mind where he has to insist that Hilary is trying to trick us, to have that attitude is to be like a stopped clock, right twice a day. He could be right, eventually he will find an example to show that he is right, twice a day; the rest of the day the cynic doesn’t know what time it is in his empty universe.

Yesterday I wrote that the greatest act of love is to let someone be, accept without cynicism, accept without fear of disappointment, accept without fear of pain. There is a joy that comes from accepting without qualification, that joy overwhelms any pain or discomfort that comes along occasionally.

I accept her, him & myself- as is.

This is what I have seen

It has been at least six months since I wrote the ‘Lydia Aello’ thing, it was a way of tying a few things together, to see how they looked on paper and screen. It is a good time to add something to the business of experiencing whatever it was that I experienced.

All my bridges were burning, there was no way out of this horrible mess that my life had become, death was my only option. I had gone over my situation repeatedly, had burned out a number of therapists in attempts to find a solution to the depression and anxiety that destroyed all that I might have been. I truly believed that I was going to use the setup I had made, that I would no longer be alive in fifteen minutes, no hope was left unturned.

It was the absolute belief that nothing I held important was useful, no cavalry troop was going to ride in from off stage at the last minute; no smooth, moist thighs were going to open as a safe harbor; that is when I began to sense something else, I now call it ‘Presence’ even though it was and is not a thing, a presence. It is more like a verb than a noun, and it has no character other than it was through me, about me, it was me and more than me, I would never be alone again.

In the months and years to follow I went through James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, fought my way through a number of Tillich’s books, listed myself at the University of Wales, Lampeter where religious experiences can be registered. I have come to believe that I had what those others have had over the millenia, and it has led me to a few notions:

Jesus couldn’t have experienced the ultimate transcendence if he had not been brought to death by the Romans, Jesus the man teaching what all men can know.

That the guy who stood on the dessert and said ‘God is God’ pretty much said it all, and I empathize with his experience.

That people who have spiritual knowledge did not all stop two thousand years ago, there is no reason to think that there is less opportunity to know the divine than there was in Palestine back then, no reason at all.

That it is the goal of everyone to have this knowledge, whether that goal is expressed or kept hidden, there is intuitive knowledge of what it is.

I will post this as is, even though I know its inadequacy, know that what was experienced can never be portrayed accurately and fully: not by Bach, Jackson Pollock or Jesus, but we feel the need to try.

Overcast skies

Before I went to bed last night I looked up the N. W. S. forecast, it predicted overcast skies, temperatures a few degrees below then a few degrees above freezing, nothing much else. My reaction was that I was in for a dull, gray day; nothing much going on in my life, Edita is scheduled to come in for a few hours to make me and this place civilized, I’ll clear out ahead of time, no sense interfering with her cleaning; it is time to visit Bert, who might be agitated or not, might recognize me or not; I would check my email to see if hoped for messages came in or they didn’t; I had a new bag of juice oranges- a treat for first thing in the day.

I awoke this morning with that bundle of expectations, my day to be defined and judged by those things, and a dozen more that hadn’t yet come to mind. As I lay awake I realized that that would not be the start or the definition of today; I want a different day. For the last year I have been doing mindfulness exercises that I have found handy, and yet here I was about to define my day with these things that may or may not be pleasant or interesting; it was time to remember the core of what this day will be, what I am.

For many years, throughout my decades of depression I found that being alone, focusing on just being, without sound and movement would make me anxious. It can be anxiety provoking to see and accept that existence is all that there is, everything else as an auxiliary, an accessory. And that out of that notion, that feeling, that place, can could come everything else; I pursued that idea with profit.

I was walking back from the Dominick’s store yesterday, coming up Damen Ave., where I was stopped by a couple of young men from the Church of Latter Day Saints, they were identified by badges pinned to their coats. One fellow asked if they could speak to me for a couple of minutes, I agreed. To his first question, which was whether I knew anything about their church, I suppressed a comment about having spent much of the previous week watching the latest disc release of Big Love, I answered that I knew little. He began to tell me that they believed this, they believed that, they believed the other thing; I won’t try to retell it all, but their beliefs covered just about everything one could list in life, then they asked if I would like to learn more of their church. It was now my turn.

I told them that my relationship with God was in pretty good shape. I said that I really didn’t need to read the narrative of others who had experienced the divine, that no one had ever come to transcendence by reading and memorizing what others had experienced, not one person, ever. That whatever I might need, I already have, its just a matter of looking inside again.

After this pompousness on my part I walked home, self-righteousness striding up Damen Avenue.

But how else could I respond to proselytizing, what to say to someone who intrudes like that?

I have read that there was a time when belief was a word used about notions that were tried and found to be true: Believe in the Pythagorean theorem; believe that the longer the lever I have the greater the force I can apply; believe that when I push against something, I will feel pressure back at me; believe that if I forgot my wife’s birthday I would sleep on the couch; and on and on. The use has changed to be that realm of notions where belief becomes the unbelievable, where one’s innate intelligence is to be switched off, where wishful thinking becomes reality. That Joseph Smith found gold plates from God, inscribed with rules and regulations that were new and exciting? Please, please, please let us bring back critical thinking. I will refrain from going further into the problems that believing has caused us recently. The phrase I respect your beliefs has caused more harm and misdirection that almost any other I know.

And no I am not currently married, no more sleeping on the couch.

The sun has come up brightly from behind the garage across the alley, part of the weather forecast wasn’t correct, not that it matters. I will be in the day, or I will try. I will meet more interesting people on Damen Avenue, or I won’t. I’ll have a semblance of a conversation with Bert in the convalescent home, or I won’t. I will rent a video that is interesting, or one like Once that I am returning today, a study in beige, color, music, story, whining, resembling nothing as much as sipping beige, lukewarm, water.

There are days when I am satisfied with what I put down here, and then there are days when I am not sure.

About God, Jesus & the Bible

This in response to something from a week or so ago:Of course Jesus was and is Man, how else could He be relevant for these two millennia? Another definition would involve magic, the supernatural, a suspension of reason, and that has always been a weak theological line.

And yes, anything other than God is blasphemy, that is the definition of blasphemy; what Jesus did and does is enable us to transcend the mundane, to assist us in joining the Spirit.

The whole point of the spiritual journey is to become one again, to become more than we were, to get as close to the ineffable as possible.

And, as a last note: The bible becomes holy only when it assists us in going to where we ought to be. If it is just a recipe book to be memorized and followed mindlessly, it remains merely a book.

I think that how I understand the Spirit, the direction along the Path, that it is in the spirit of Luther, that he showed us the courage to know directly.